SG-1 Fic: Magnificent Desolation
Title: Magnificent Desolation
Author: abyssinia4077
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Sam Carter, Jack O’Neill [Teal’c, Daniel Jackson, Jacob Carter]
Rating/Warning: PG, spoilers through 10 x 01 - "Flesh and Blood"
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to MGM, Bridges Studios, and a lot of people who are not me. Just having some fun playing in their sandbox.
Word Count: 5138
Author's Note: Written for the sg1friendathon using the prompt: Jack and Sam. "We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."
Huge thanks to: likethesun2 for some fact-checking, annerbhp and rigel_7 for their fantastic betas and aurora_novarum for the 2.5 beta jobs, the encouragement, and the kicking me when I kept trying to give up on this thing.
Any casualties in the war against the comma are my own fault.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
- - Sarah Williams, “The Old Astronomer to his Pupil”
1965
Ed White performed America’s first EVA three months after Alexei Leonov. His spacesuit expanded against the vacuum of space and after thirty-six minutes of floating, he returned to the Gemini capsule and a tense moment when the hatch banged against his helmet instead of closing. The astronauts squished themselves in and tried again and nobody was lost to the void of space.
As he floated over the country from California to Florida, if his camera zoom had been powerful enough, he could have caught an image of a couple walking hand-in-hand on the North Carolina coast where Lieutenant Jacob Carter, on a forty-eight hour pass, had taken his fiancée for the weekend.
Or he might have glimpsed a young Jack O’Neill playing an evening baseball game in the park, dodging Minnesota mosquitoes as he ran from first to second, legs still finding their coordination after an early summer growth spurt.
Two years later Ed White will perish in a fire on a launch pad in Florida. Jack will come home from school with an algebra book under his arm to learn the news. And Jacob Carter will share a somber dinner with his wife.
***
“Do you think,” Colonel O’Neill asks, shivering the cold vacuum of space out of his pores, “that we’ve gotten too cocky?”
“What do you mean?” Sam kneels next to him on the floor of the Al’Kesh, checking vitals and unfolding a thermal blanket.
“We run around defeating snakeheads who have spaceships and laser beams and artificial gravity. But all we can do is put people in a tin can on top of a giant missile and hope they make it back.”
“Sir, we did manage to rescue you and Teal’c.” He nods. She thinks later she’ll ask what it was like to fly past Jupiter.
1968
Samantha Carter was born five days after men from Earth first saw the far side of the moon. As Lovell and Anders read from the book of Genesis and wished the people on Earth a Merry Christmas from further away than anyone had ever been, her mother felt the first whisper of contractions. Her soon-to-be parents had listened to the radio announcement in military housing, eating a sparse dinner for two at the rickety table. Later her father put his hand on her mother’s belly and bent over to whisper to his unborn child, “That could be you someday.”
If her name meant that Jacob had wanted a son, that didn’t stop him from looking at his first child in wonder -- from counting her toes and fingers and smiling at her sleepy sighs -- and it didn’t stop him from bringing toy airplanes home for her.
Almost exactly nine months before she came screaming into the world Yuri Gagarin’s airplane fell to Earth. Years later she’ll have a friend who believes in reincarnation and who will convince Sam to spend an afternoon in the library with her looking up who died when they were born, when they were conceived. When Sam sees Gagarin’s name she will close the book and never tell anyone.
***
“You have a telescope, colonel?” Daniel’s wake ended hours ago, but she and Teal’c haven’t left yet. Sam just isn’t ready to be apart from what’s left of her team but she didn’t expect to be invited to her team leader’s roof. Tomorrow they have to sort through Daniel’s belongings.
“You look so surprised.”
“I thought you didn’t like scientists.” That first briefing wasn’t so long ago. She still isn’t sure if she’s proven herself yet.
“Telescopes don’t talk back.”
1969
The summer Jack was sixteen Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. Earlier in the day, his Uncle Ed had grilled hot dogs and hamburgers to go with Aunt May’s potato salad and his grandmother had baked blueberry pie. Jack’s three-year-old cousin spent an hour insisting Jack fly him around the backyard like an airplane in and out of the shadows from the oak trees while his uncles talked about politics and his other cousins played with sparklers and fireworks left from two weeks ago.
Once the sun set, everybody piled into the living room -- adults on every available chair and cousins on the floor and Jack, as oldest, claimed prime real estate on his grandparent’s burnt orange carpet right in front of the black and white tv. It was past a lot of bedtimes, but nobody thought of leaving the room. The Coke bottle at his knee was sweating in the humid Chicago heat. Jack was sweating too, but he didn’t care because the man on the tv said they were switching to NASA footage.
“C’mon, Billy,” Aunt May said to his left, shaking the sleepy five year-old and getting him to sit up. No O’Neill was going to miss this tonight. As the picture changed from a man in a suit and narrow tie to a static-y black and white picture of a landscape not on Earth, the entire room went silent.
Jack held his breath as over 230,000 miles away on another world with less gravity and no atmosphere Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder and paused. Jack counted his heartbeats until he stepped down, bringing up a tiny cloud of dust and uttering the tinny words that echoed in millions of televisions all over Earth. One small step for man…one giant leap for mankind.
Thirty minutes later the little ones were being put into bed when Jack’s Uncle Dave beckoned him outside. Uncle Jim and Scott were already on the patio smoking cigars with their backs to the Chicago skyline. “You look at that, Jack-o,” Uncle Dave said, pointing to the sky where the half-full moon sat heavy and low in the sky. “Right now men just like you are walking on the moon. Look at what we can do.”
Uncle Scott handed Jack his cigar, letting him take a couple of puffs until he couldn’t hold back the cough. He’d started hitting the age where they don’t treat him like a kid anymore. But he wasn’t yet old enough to look at the moon and not think that one day that could be him.
By the time Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins landed back on Earth, Jack was home in Minnesota working at the neighborhood ice cream shop. He talked to his pals about the car he was saving up to buy and the girl he wanted to ask to Homecoming. He kept the stars locked inside just for him.
***
Sam’s been sleeping in shifts off-world long enough that she doesn’t even need Colonel O’Neill to wake her for her watch. When she leaves the tent and Daniel’s soft snores, he’s staring at the sky and the small fire dances shadows over the tent where Teal’c is Kel’noreeming.
“Carter,” Colonel O’Neill whispers, pointing up. She follows his gaze to where one of the planet’s two moons is slowly being eclipsed.
“Oh, wow,” she breathes, sitting back to stare. “I’ve actually never seen an eclipse before.”
“You haven’t?” He sounds shocked.
“Never in the right place at the right time,” she shrugs, settling in to keep watch. A few minutes later he still hasn’t moved. “Uh, sir, shouldn’t you get some sleep?”
“And miss this?” he asks, stretching out on his back to better see the sky.
1972
The same month humans left the moon for the last time, Jack O’Neill’s boots left the soil of Vietnam. He wasn’t the same man he was when he arrived, aimless and a little innocent. Somewhere between jumping out of helicopters and huddling in foxholes he’d found something he was good at and a place where he belonged. The structure of the military worked for him -- the order and the camaraderie and the discipline -- and he found that in the field, when things got hot, other men followed his lead. His mind grabbed onto strategy as a puzzle much more fascinating than any of the high school classes he slacked through and he liked the challenge, if not the killing. But if someone must get their hands dirty, well, his already were by now.
His last night in the field, when he was so short they wouldn’t put him near the line, Paul slid into his foxhole.
“What you gonna do?” Paul asked, digging for his can opener. Jack handed over his P-38 without comment and soon the hole smelled like cold beans.
“Eat real food,” Jack joked, reaching his spoon out to steal a bite.
“No, really, man,” Paul asked, leaning back in the hole and trying to stretch his legs. “Out there, you a natural. Just blend into the jungle, tell us what to do without a thought. Can’t imagine you in the World.”
Jack stared up at the stars that filtered through the canopy. The longer he had been here, the further away the sky seemed. “Figure I’ll go to college and then join the Air Force. Get a commission.”
“No shit!” Paul exclaimed, turning in surprise.
“I want to fly.”
“Boots like yours…” Paul said, shaking his head. “Shame to take ‘em off the ground.”
When Jack climbed into the plane to fly back, somehow knowing he’d never step on this particular soil again, he found himself wishing the bird would never level off. Just keep climbing higher and higher.
***
“There was a part of me that loved it. If the crew wasn’t depending on me…” Sam twists the infirmary bed sheets between her fingers.
Colonel O’Neill leans forward in his plastic chair. “Carter?”
“No, really, I thought about just…being free. Me and the Prometheus and the galaxy.” She can’t look at him. “Wherever I wanted to go.”
She looks up, meets his eyes for a second before looking away to where his hand is fiddling with some IV tubing.
“Does that make me horrible?” she finally asks, when he doesn’t respond.
“…No.”
1981
Jacob Carter was stationed in Florida for a year and Kennedy Space Center was a two hour drive, but he wouldn’t miss this for anything. Mark had the chicken pox, so it was only him and Sam in the car all the way there.
She wore jeans and a t-shirt and talked his ear off about how her math class was too easy this year and how she was the only girl willing to grab a scalpel when they dissected frogs in science class and that she was thinking of running for student council next year but all the popular kids were probably going to win and was she going to have to move schools again soon.
When they got to the launch site the area was buzzing with reporters and camera crews and he grabbed her hand tight and led her to their prime seats. There were times when having military connections was definitely worth it.
Sam stopped talking when the voice over the loudspeaker gave a ten minute warning and the whole crowd watched the Columbia on the launch pad. She stood next to him for the countdown, rising on her toes when the rockets ignited and huge clouds of steam surrounded the shuttle before it rocked and began to rise, a behemoth struggling to strip free from the clutch of Earth’s gravity.
Long after it had climbed and shrunk and faded to nothing in the sky, she watched the trail and the place where it had disappeared from view. When Jacob put his hand on her shoulder to tell her it was time to leave she turned and he’d never seen her eyes so bright. “That’s going to be me someday,” she told him, no doubt in her voice.
“It will if you want it to be,” he agreed, smiling and turning to lead her out. If he knew his daughter, she wouldn’t let anything stop her.
She watched the sky the entire ride home.
Two years later Sally Ride will become the first woman America sends into space. Jacob’s wife will be dead, his son won’t be talking to him and his daughter will withdraw into herself. But she’ll still have a telescope in her window and an astronaut doll by her bed and a poster from the Apollo program on the wall. When he gets her an autographed photo she’ll hang it next to her bed, where she can see it every morning.
***
“Something on your mind, Carter?” Colonel O’Neill asks out of the blue. Sam’s been watching Washington shrink outside her window while he fiddles with a bottle of water, obviously wishing he was flying the plane.
“My dad said he could get me into NASA.”
“Huh,” O’Neill says, twisting the cap on and off the bottle. “Years of training for an eleven day mission. Two if you’re lucky. But,” his voice grows just a touch wistful, “flying up there. We don’t get to do that.”
“Yeah. I told him no. Couldn’t tell him why.” She wants to so badly, wonders if she’ll ever get the chance.
Colonel O’Neill nods, sticking the bottle between his knees. She doesn’t ask if he ever took Charlie to a launch.
1986
Sam had already been accepted to the Air Force Academy and was a shoo-in for high school valedictorian. Her fellow students were taking lighter loads and slacking off for their last semester but Sam had piled on honors courses including a physics class at the local community college. Every Saturday she drove to the county airport for flying lessons. Somehow she fit in training for this year’s track season and practicing with the math team.
She was sitting in A.P. Chemistry when a student from the office brought a note to the teacher, who turned ashen and announced to the class that the Challenger had exploded during lift-off.
Sam didn’t pay attention the rest of class and afterwards, instead of going to Western Literature, she walked out the side door and kept walking. She’d never skipped a class before or broken a rule or gotten in trouble but this day she didn’t care. In the woods outside of town she sat at the base of a leaf-less tree, pulled her jacket tight around herself, and cried.
After dark she wandered home and found a note from her dad on the table and dinner to reheat in the oven. She ignored it to go upstairs, lie on her bed, and stare at the ceiling. She’d spent so many years with single-minded determination to a goal that was getting more and more within reach and now it might evaporate between her fingers and she couldn’t even feel sorry for herself because people had died.
Hundreds of miles away Sara O’Neill put a hand on her abdomen, where the baby was kicking, and watched her husband twitch through fitful dreams. He had come back to her from his last mission months late and broken in ways he won’t talk about, deeper than the new scars on his skin. But now he has started looking at her belly with the same awe he used to aim at the sky and she hoped that maybe the child would make him whole again the way she couldn’t.
***
These are the things they don’t tell you.
Alan Shepard wet his pants on the launch pad.
The two monkeys tried to kill each other in orbit.
The Apollo 7 astronauts refused to put on their helmets for re-entry.
The hardest thing to get used to about ‘gate travel is coming home and nothing being different.
1998
Sam hadn’t forgotten NASA when she found herself in DC working on a top-secret project and she hadn’t forgotten when she transferred to Colorado and she hadn’t forgotten when she set foot on her first alien planet or her second or her third. She never forgot, but she did find something just as satisfying.
There was an irony somewhere that she’d been visiting alien planets for a year before she first boarded a spaceship and then she was too busy hiding from Jaffa and setting C-4 to really absorb the few times she could stop and take a breath near a window.
So it was understandable that when they were floating in the death gliders above Earth, she didn’t notice at first. Because she was still in mission-mode, trying to anticipate their next problem and deal with the current one and find some solution to get to where they had to be next and it’s not like Teal’c hadn’t seen this before (Teal’c, to whom television was a miracle and flying in space ships was old hat). Plus they’d just lost Daniel. Again.
So when Colonel O’Neill told her to look up it took her a minute to realize he wasn’t telling her to look and find a way out of this mess. He just wanted her to see.
Above her was the view she’d been dreaming of her entire life -- the Earth from above and the black void full of pinpricks of stars but mostly the Earth -- blue and green filling her vision. It was more amazing than she’d ever imagined as a kid, lying on a field beneath Orion and Cassiopeia, closing her eyes and dreaming she was flying.
For Teal’c and Bra’tac this was nothing new, but she’d seen the posters on O’Neill’s walls and the rocket models on his shelves and she knew he understood. She dared to think that if they died now, it wouldn’t be so bad. They’d saved Earth. And she’d seen this.
But before that thought was finished the Endeavor was in view and before she knew it she was floating in an actual shuttle, struggling between grinning about where she was and holding back tears at the loss of her teammate. She was watching Africa pass beneath the window when Colonel O’Neill floated up next to her.
“I never thought I’d see this,” he admitted, breath fogging the glass.
“Me neither, sir,” she answered.
“O’Neill,” Teal’c called, pulling himself toward them. “This shuttle is not a formidable craft.”
“Uh, no, it’s not.”
“The pilot informs me there are no weapons aboard,” Teal’c continued, looking perturbed.
“Y’see, Teal’c, there’s this treaty we have about not militarizing space,” the colonel tried to explain.
“But you are fighting against the Goa’uld,” Teal’c stated, raising an eyebrow. “The Goa’uld have spaceships with weapons.”
“Uh, yeah, they do,” Colonel O’Neill admitted, turning and raising an eyebrow at Sam. “Carter?”
“Don’t look at me sir,” she said, smiling slightly before looking back out the window. Space was supposed to be the frontier, the place they could explore without fighting, and Teal’c was wrong, there were weapons onboard. The ones they’d brought.
***
These are the things they do tell you.
Human beings adjust to new situations disturbingly quickly, but it helps to know which way is up.
Force of gravity depends on planet mass. You will be heavier on Kelowna. You will feel like floating on PX3-989. Antarctica will feel like Earth, even when you think it isn’t.
Space is big. Just because you can ‘gate to another planet in one step doesn’t mean a rescue ship can arrive in your lifetime.
Don’t hold your breath.
2003
Sam was building a spaceship, which alone would make her thirteen-year-old self flip out. But she wasn’t just building a spaceship. She was building one with artificial gravity and inertial dampeners and faster than light engines and everything else she’d say should be impossible. Except after you’ve blown up a sun, impossible didn’t have the same meaning anymore.
Of course, the Prometheus Project wasn’t just hers. There was a whole team of scientists and engineers for whom the ship was their only job. She only got to help whenever she had enough time on Earth without something else at SGC demanding her attention.
She’d just gotten back and was poring over some blueprints, trying to figure out where they’d messed up the wiring to make the engine control room lights flash like a college party when Colonel O’Neill popped his head in the door.
“Hey, how’d it go?” he asked, stepping in and heading right for the shelf where she kept shiny objects he couldn’t break.
“The air circulation system’s working perfectly,” she told him as he picked up the small metal space shuttle, using his thumb to flip the payload bay doors open and shut. “But we’re having some problem with the wiring in this access shaft.” She pointed to the blueprint spread on her bench.
He walked over, stared at it a minute, then looked up. “Okay, but how does it look?” It happened nearly every time - within thirty minutes of her getting back he’d be in her office, dropping his facade just long enough for her to see the glimmer of hope and amazement before he covered it up again.
“Beautiful,” Sam says, smiling. “If we ever get it off the ground.”
“You checked for,” his hand waved indistinctly, “booby-traps?”
“All Earth made, sir.”
He nodded. “If you can pull yourself away from those fascinating blueprints, Doc Fraiser could use your help packing for Antarctica. And if you could check on Jonas, I think he might have been a tad over-eager trying to bring the entire SGC library. We ship out in six hours.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, rolling up the diagram.
Back in the beginning of the Stargate Program, she and Daniel had discussed childhood dreams. Daniel had never wanted to slip the bounds of Earth. He'd dreamed of secrets beneath the sand and reviving dead languages and academic recognition. He imagined an office, museum exhibits and sand-scoured, wind-burnt skin -- mysteries on Earth rather than among the stars.
Sam had only ever dreamed of touching the stars, of jumping high enough to not fall back and seeing everything that was out there and maybe, maybe, not looking back.
Sometimes she wondered what Colonel O’Neill had dreamed and what dreams he’d given up.
***
These are the things you will learn.
Force equals mass times acceleration but that doesn’t count, and neither does relativity, when you don’t play in normal space.
Physics problems aren’t as much fun when they involve real people.
Touching the stars doesn’t make you want them any less.
Sometimes the dreams are all you have left and sometimes you have to set them free.
2005
Jack winced and bit back the curse when his shin slammed into the end table Daniel had moved earlier. That was one plus about moving to Washington, he’d be able to watch movies without two geeks complaining about everything Hollywood messed up and then putting his furniture back wrong.
“Sir?” a sleepy voice asked from the couch. He turned, nearly dropping the metal tube wedged under his arm, to see Carter half-sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Earlier she’d insisted Daniel and Teal’c take the beds in the loft, claiming she fit best down here.
“Carter,” he whispered, carefully stepping around the table and hoping there weren’t any more land mines. “Go back to sleep.”
“Sir, what are you doing?” she asked, sitting up straighter. Damn. He hadn’t wanted his increased inability to sleep through the night to disturb any of them.
“Night’s clear,” he said, shrugging and heading for the back door. As he adjusted the rickety tripod, twisting the back leg to the only spot it would hold without collapsing, he heard the door open and close behind him. After another second making sure the old telescope wasn’t going to land in the pond, he turned to find Carter standing with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Somehow, with the moonlight glinting off her hair, she looked taller. He thought maybe she’d looked taller this whole year, since finally getting the command she should have gotten years ago. If only he hadn’t been too dependent on her, on all of them, cared more than he should have. Not that he’d ever admit that to any of them.
He nodded at her and bent down, slowly turning the creaky gears to aim the scope and, finally, satisfied, stepped back. “Care to take a look?” he asked, keeping one hand on the instrument to hold it steady.
Carter stepped forward, bending toward the eyepiece in one smooth motion. “That’s…” she started to say quietly.
“Mare Tranquilitatis,” he finished. “Better scope you might still be able to see the LEM.”
She flashed him a quick, surprised smile before looking back down at something he was sure she’d seen before. Eight years ago she was so amazed by the event horizon of her first open wormhole, he’d had to shove her through it to Abydos. It had been a long time since he’d seen that kind of wonder on her face. A part of him missed it.
“Sir, you have a better telescope at your house,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but this one belongs here,” he said, giving it a gentle pat. “My grandfather bought it when Sputnik was launched.”
Carter leaned back to look at the stars with just her eyes, face looking younger in the moonlight. There were times Jack wished you could erase years that easily. “Sir, before the Stargate Program,” she asked quietly, not looking his way, “did you ever want to go up there?”
“Yeah.” His soft answer faded away into the night.
“What happened?” she asked.
Jack picked up a rock, rubbing his thumb across the smooth surface, finding the tiny nicks in the surface that had been rubbed smooth over the centuries. With a flick of his wrist he sent it bouncing once, twice, three times before sinking beneath the surface of the water. He’d taught Charlie to skip stones, standing right here.
“Life.”
***
Prometheus brought fire to man and incurred the wrath of the gods.
Daedalus built wings to fly like the gods and lost his only son when Icarus tried to touch the stars.
Odysseus sailed the Odyssey on an endless quest to return home after angering the gods.
Korelev was a man who built rockets to first fling humans into space.
Goa’uld motherships don’t have names.
2007
Sam couldn’t do anything but float and watch as the Ori ships plowed through the Supergate. She should have been terrified but she was too busy being frustrated by her inability to do anything as the ships tore through their measly armada, as the Odyssey took hit after hit, and the motherships blew and she thought, in the distance, she saw the Korelev take one shot too many.
She didn’t start shaking until she was back on Earth. Not back inside the concrete walls of the SGC. Not in the infirmary waiting to get cleared or back in her lab tidying up loose ends or helping Daniel get Vala settled into quarters. It was when she took the long elevator ride to the surface, signed out at three different checkpoints, and walked out to the parking lot that it started.
The sun had set hours ago and the cool breeze coming off the mountains was starting to cut the heat of the day. Somewhere in the distance an owl was hooting and all above the heavens pulsed at her - infinite blackness scattered with specks of light and she could only look upwards and shudder. Suddenly she felt just how infinite and cold and huge and unrelenting the universe was and the stars that once called to her were heavy and overwhelming.
When her cell phone rang her hand shook so much she nearly dropped it. “Carter,” she said into the mouthpiece, trying to sound controlled.
“Heard you had quite the EVA,” General O’Neill’s voice greeted her.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Didn’t do much good.”
“We’ve gotten out of plenty of scrapes before.”
“I know but…” she paused, remembering floating there as everything exploded around her, and shivered. “I’ve never seen ships like that. We didn’t even slow them down. I’m not sure how we can stop them.”
“Carter. I seem to remember you blowing up a sun.”
“That was just science, sir.”
“We kicked the Goa’uld’s ass and got rid of the Replicators. I think we can take on some over-zealous preachers.” She thought he knew how over-confident he sounded.
“Maybe,” she agreed quietly.
During the minute of silence that followed she straddled her motorcycle, hunching over the handles so her back was to the sky. Her hands were still shaking. She probably shouldn’t drive home - should probably go back into the mountain, see who was still there, have dinner, maybe sleep in her quarters. But burying herself deep underground was just as unfathomable.
“Carter?” O’Neill’s voice asked. “Still there?”
She opened her mouth, felt a lump in her throat, finally managed to whisper, “I really thought I was going to die out there.” She saw it all, the Korelev explode with, she’d thought, Daniel and Cam, and the fiery death of motherships (no way to tell which one held Teal’c) and then the Odyssey disappearing and she got to survive the battle, useless, and float among the debris until her air went out. And yet somehow she couldn’t stop calling on her radio.
“Sam.” The name he never used shocked her spine straight. “Look up.”
“Sir?”
“Look up.” His voice was firmer. “What do you see?”
“Uh. Stars?”
“How many of them have we visited?”
“Um, a tiny fraction. Most of the planets we’ve been to don’t have stars that are visible from Earth.”
“Most of the planets we’ve been to,” he echoed. “Ten years ago could you have imagined yourself saying that?”
“Not so much,” she admitted, smiling slightly.
“Okay, Carter, so you go home, have a beer, get some sleep, and tomorrow you can start saving the universe again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And just remember, you blew up a sun.” He hung up before she could respond.
She looked up, trying to remember how to look at the sky and see its potential. To the north was a dim light, barely visible to the naked eye -- the star she blew up -- the last of its light still speeding toward Earth.
Resource acknowledgments: Andrew Chaikin's A Man On the Moon; The Right Stuff; The Space Camp Reference Handbook; everything I picked up over the years at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, National Air and Space Museum; and www.nasa.gov
Author: abyssinia4077
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Sam Carter, Jack O’Neill [Teal’c, Daniel Jackson, Jacob Carter]
Rating/Warning: PG, spoilers through 10 x 01 - "Flesh and Blood"
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to MGM, Bridges Studios, and a lot of people who are not me. Just having some fun playing in their sandbox.
Word Count: 5138
Author's Note: Written for the sg1friendathon using the prompt: Jack and Sam. "We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."
Huge thanks to: likethesun2 for some fact-checking, annerbhp and rigel_7 for their fantastic betas and aurora_novarum for the 2.5 beta jobs, the encouragement, and the kicking me when I kept trying to give up on this thing.
Any casualties in the war against the comma are my own fault.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
- - Sarah Williams, “The Old Astronomer to his Pupil”
1965
Ed White performed America’s first EVA three months after Alexei Leonov. His spacesuit expanded against the vacuum of space and after thirty-six minutes of floating, he returned to the Gemini capsule and a tense moment when the hatch banged against his helmet instead of closing. The astronauts squished themselves in and tried again and nobody was lost to the void of space.
As he floated over the country from California to Florida, if his camera zoom had been powerful enough, he could have caught an image of a couple walking hand-in-hand on the North Carolina coast where Lieutenant Jacob Carter, on a forty-eight hour pass, had taken his fiancée for the weekend.
Or he might have glimpsed a young Jack O’Neill playing an evening baseball game in the park, dodging Minnesota mosquitoes as he ran from first to second, legs still finding their coordination after an early summer growth spurt.
Two years later Ed White will perish in a fire on a launch pad in Florida. Jack will come home from school with an algebra book under his arm to learn the news. And Jacob Carter will share a somber dinner with his wife.
***
“Do you think,” Colonel O’Neill asks, shivering the cold vacuum of space out of his pores, “that we’ve gotten too cocky?”
“What do you mean?” Sam kneels next to him on the floor of the Al’Kesh, checking vitals and unfolding a thermal blanket.
“We run around defeating snakeheads who have spaceships and laser beams and artificial gravity. But all we can do is put people in a tin can on top of a giant missile and hope they make it back.”
“Sir, we did manage to rescue you and Teal’c.” He nods. She thinks later she’ll ask what it was like to fly past Jupiter.
1968
Samantha Carter was born five days after men from Earth first saw the far side of the moon. As Lovell and Anders read from the book of Genesis and wished the people on Earth a Merry Christmas from further away than anyone had ever been, her mother felt the first whisper of contractions. Her soon-to-be parents had listened to the radio announcement in military housing, eating a sparse dinner for two at the rickety table. Later her father put his hand on her mother’s belly and bent over to whisper to his unborn child, “That could be you someday.”
If her name meant that Jacob had wanted a son, that didn’t stop him from looking at his first child in wonder -- from counting her toes and fingers and smiling at her sleepy sighs -- and it didn’t stop him from bringing toy airplanes home for her.
Almost exactly nine months before she came screaming into the world Yuri Gagarin’s airplane fell to Earth. Years later she’ll have a friend who believes in reincarnation and who will convince Sam to spend an afternoon in the library with her looking up who died when they were born, when they were conceived. When Sam sees Gagarin’s name she will close the book and never tell anyone.
***
“You have a telescope, colonel?” Daniel’s wake ended hours ago, but she and Teal’c haven’t left yet. Sam just isn’t ready to be apart from what’s left of her team but she didn’t expect to be invited to her team leader’s roof. Tomorrow they have to sort through Daniel’s belongings.
“You look so surprised.”
“I thought you didn’t like scientists.” That first briefing wasn’t so long ago. She still isn’t sure if she’s proven herself yet.
“Telescopes don’t talk back.”
1969
The summer Jack was sixteen Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. Earlier in the day, his Uncle Ed had grilled hot dogs and hamburgers to go with Aunt May’s potato salad and his grandmother had baked blueberry pie. Jack’s three-year-old cousin spent an hour insisting Jack fly him around the backyard like an airplane in and out of the shadows from the oak trees while his uncles talked about politics and his other cousins played with sparklers and fireworks left from two weeks ago.
Once the sun set, everybody piled into the living room -- adults on every available chair and cousins on the floor and Jack, as oldest, claimed prime real estate on his grandparent’s burnt orange carpet right in front of the black and white tv. It was past a lot of bedtimes, but nobody thought of leaving the room. The Coke bottle at his knee was sweating in the humid Chicago heat. Jack was sweating too, but he didn’t care because the man on the tv said they were switching to NASA footage.
“C’mon, Billy,” Aunt May said to his left, shaking the sleepy five year-old and getting him to sit up. No O’Neill was going to miss this tonight. As the picture changed from a man in a suit and narrow tie to a static-y black and white picture of a landscape not on Earth, the entire room went silent.
Jack held his breath as over 230,000 miles away on another world with less gravity and no atmosphere Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder and paused. Jack counted his heartbeats until he stepped down, bringing up a tiny cloud of dust and uttering the tinny words that echoed in millions of televisions all over Earth. One small step for man…one giant leap for mankind.
Thirty minutes later the little ones were being put into bed when Jack’s Uncle Dave beckoned him outside. Uncle Jim and Scott were already on the patio smoking cigars with their backs to the Chicago skyline. “You look at that, Jack-o,” Uncle Dave said, pointing to the sky where the half-full moon sat heavy and low in the sky. “Right now men just like you are walking on the moon. Look at what we can do.”
Uncle Scott handed Jack his cigar, letting him take a couple of puffs until he couldn’t hold back the cough. He’d started hitting the age where they don’t treat him like a kid anymore. But he wasn’t yet old enough to look at the moon and not think that one day that could be him.
By the time Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins landed back on Earth, Jack was home in Minnesota working at the neighborhood ice cream shop. He talked to his pals about the car he was saving up to buy and the girl he wanted to ask to Homecoming. He kept the stars locked inside just for him.
***
Sam’s been sleeping in shifts off-world long enough that she doesn’t even need Colonel O’Neill to wake her for her watch. When she leaves the tent and Daniel’s soft snores, he’s staring at the sky and the small fire dances shadows over the tent where Teal’c is Kel’noreeming.
“Carter,” Colonel O’Neill whispers, pointing up. She follows his gaze to where one of the planet’s two moons is slowly being eclipsed.
“Oh, wow,” she breathes, sitting back to stare. “I’ve actually never seen an eclipse before.”
“You haven’t?” He sounds shocked.
“Never in the right place at the right time,” she shrugs, settling in to keep watch. A few minutes later he still hasn’t moved. “Uh, sir, shouldn’t you get some sleep?”
“And miss this?” he asks, stretching out on his back to better see the sky.
1972
The same month humans left the moon for the last time, Jack O’Neill’s boots left the soil of Vietnam. He wasn’t the same man he was when he arrived, aimless and a little innocent. Somewhere between jumping out of helicopters and huddling in foxholes he’d found something he was good at and a place where he belonged. The structure of the military worked for him -- the order and the camaraderie and the discipline -- and he found that in the field, when things got hot, other men followed his lead. His mind grabbed onto strategy as a puzzle much more fascinating than any of the high school classes he slacked through and he liked the challenge, if not the killing. But if someone must get their hands dirty, well, his already were by now.
His last night in the field, when he was so short they wouldn’t put him near the line, Paul slid into his foxhole.
“What you gonna do?” Paul asked, digging for his can opener. Jack handed over his P-38 without comment and soon the hole smelled like cold beans.
“Eat real food,” Jack joked, reaching his spoon out to steal a bite.
“No, really, man,” Paul asked, leaning back in the hole and trying to stretch his legs. “Out there, you a natural. Just blend into the jungle, tell us what to do without a thought. Can’t imagine you in the World.”
Jack stared up at the stars that filtered through the canopy. The longer he had been here, the further away the sky seemed. “Figure I’ll go to college and then join the Air Force. Get a commission.”
“No shit!” Paul exclaimed, turning in surprise.
“I want to fly.”
“Boots like yours…” Paul said, shaking his head. “Shame to take ‘em off the ground.”
When Jack climbed into the plane to fly back, somehow knowing he’d never step on this particular soil again, he found himself wishing the bird would never level off. Just keep climbing higher and higher.
***
“There was a part of me that loved it. If the crew wasn’t depending on me…” Sam twists the infirmary bed sheets between her fingers.
Colonel O’Neill leans forward in his plastic chair. “Carter?”
“No, really, I thought about just…being free. Me and the Prometheus and the galaxy.” She can’t look at him. “Wherever I wanted to go.”
She looks up, meets his eyes for a second before looking away to where his hand is fiddling with some IV tubing.
“Does that make me horrible?” she finally asks, when he doesn’t respond.
“…No.”
1981
Jacob Carter was stationed in Florida for a year and Kennedy Space Center was a two hour drive, but he wouldn’t miss this for anything. Mark had the chicken pox, so it was only him and Sam in the car all the way there.
She wore jeans and a t-shirt and talked his ear off about how her math class was too easy this year and how she was the only girl willing to grab a scalpel when they dissected frogs in science class and that she was thinking of running for student council next year but all the popular kids were probably going to win and was she going to have to move schools again soon.
When they got to the launch site the area was buzzing with reporters and camera crews and he grabbed her hand tight and led her to their prime seats. There were times when having military connections was definitely worth it.
Sam stopped talking when the voice over the loudspeaker gave a ten minute warning and the whole crowd watched the Columbia on the launch pad. She stood next to him for the countdown, rising on her toes when the rockets ignited and huge clouds of steam surrounded the shuttle before it rocked and began to rise, a behemoth struggling to strip free from the clutch of Earth’s gravity.
Long after it had climbed and shrunk and faded to nothing in the sky, she watched the trail and the place where it had disappeared from view. When Jacob put his hand on her shoulder to tell her it was time to leave she turned and he’d never seen her eyes so bright. “That’s going to be me someday,” she told him, no doubt in her voice.
“It will if you want it to be,” he agreed, smiling and turning to lead her out. If he knew his daughter, she wouldn’t let anything stop her.
She watched the sky the entire ride home.
Two years later Sally Ride will become the first woman America sends into space. Jacob’s wife will be dead, his son won’t be talking to him and his daughter will withdraw into herself. But she’ll still have a telescope in her window and an astronaut doll by her bed and a poster from the Apollo program on the wall. When he gets her an autographed photo she’ll hang it next to her bed, where she can see it every morning.
***
“Something on your mind, Carter?” Colonel O’Neill asks out of the blue. Sam’s been watching Washington shrink outside her window while he fiddles with a bottle of water, obviously wishing he was flying the plane.
“My dad said he could get me into NASA.”
“Huh,” O’Neill says, twisting the cap on and off the bottle. “Years of training for an eleven day mission. Two if you’re lucky. But,” his voice grows just a touch wistful, “flying up there. We don’t get to do that.”
“Yeah. I told him no. Couldn’t tell him why.” She wants to so badly, wonders if she’ll ever get the chance.
Colonel O’Neill nods, sticking the bottle between his knees. She doesn’t ask if he ever took Charlie to a launch.
1986
Sam had already been accepted to the Air Force Academy and was a shoo-in for high school valedictorian. Her fellow students were taking lighter loads and slacking off for their last semester but Sam had piled on honors courses including a physics class at the local community college. Every Saturday she drove to the county airport for flying lessons. Somehow she fit in training for this year’s track season and practicing with the math team.
She was sitting in A.P. Chemistry when a student from the office brought a note to the teacher, who turned ashen and announced to the class that the Challenger had exploded during lift-off.
Sam didn’t pay attention the rest of class and afterwards, instead of going to Western Literature, she walked out the side door and kept walking. She’d never skipped a class before or broken a rule or gotten in trouble but this day she didn’t care. In the woods outside of town she sat at the base of a leaf-less tree, pulled her jacket tight around herself, and cried.
After dark she wandered home and found a note from her dad on the table and dinner to reheat in the oven. She ignored it to go upstairs, lie on her bed, and stare at the ceiling. She’d spent so many years with single-minded determination to a goal that was getting more and more within reach and now it might evaporate between her fingers and she couldn’t even feel sorry for herself because people had died.
Hundreds of miles away Sara O’Neill put a hand on her abdomen, where the baby was kicking, and watched her husband twitch through fitful dreams. He had come back to her from his last mission months late and broken in ways he won’t talk about, deeper than the new scars on his skin. But now he has started looking at her belly with the same awe he used to aim at the sky and she hoped that maybe the child would make him whole again the way she couldn’t.
***
These are the things they don’t tell you.
Alan Shepard wet his pants on the launch pad.
The two monkeys tried to kill each other in orbit.
The Apollo 7 astronauts refused to put on their helmets for re-entry.
The hardest thing to get used to about ‘gate travel is coming home and nothing being different.
1998
Sam hadn’t forgotten NASA when she found herself in DC working on a top-secret project and she hadn’t forgotten when she transferred to Colorado and she hadn’t forgotten when she set foot on her first alien planet or her second or her third. She never forgot, but she did find something just as satisfying.
There was an irony somewhere that she’d been visiting alien planets for a year before she first boarded a spaceship and then she was too busy hiding from Jaffa and setting C-4 to really absorb the few times she could stop and take a breath near a window.
So it was understandable that when they were floating in the death gliders above Earth, she didn’t notice at first. Because she was still in mission-mode, trying to anticipate their next problem and deal with the current one and find some solution to get to where they had to be next and it’s not like Teal’c hadn’t seen this before (Teal’c, to whom television was a miracle and flying in space ships was old hat). Plus they’d just lost Daniel. Again.
So when Colonel O’Neill told her to look up it took her a minute to realize he wasn’t telling her to look and find a way out of this mess. He just wanted her to see.
Above her was the view she’d been dreaming of her entire life -- the Earth from above and the black void full of pinpricks of stars but mostly the Earth -- blue and green filling her vision. It was more amazing than she’d ever imagined as a kid, lying on a field beneath Orion and Cassiopeia, closing her eyes and dreaming she was flying.
For Teal’c and Bra’tac this was nothing new, but she’d seen the posters on O’Neill’s walls and the rocket models on his shelves and she knew he understood. She dared to think that if they died now, it wouldn’t be so bad. They’d saved Earth. And she’d seen this.
But before that thought was finished the Endeavor was in view and before she knew it she was floating in an actual shuttle, struggling between grinning about where she was and holding back tears at the loss of her teammate. She was watching Africa pass beneath the window when Colonel O’Neill floated up next to her.
“I never thought I’d see this,” he admitted, breath fogging the glass.
“Me neither, sir,” she answered.
“O’Neill,” Teal’c called, pulling himself toward them. “This shuttle is not a formidable craft.”
“Uh, no, it’s not.”
“The pilot informs me there are no weapons aboard,” Teal’c continued, looking perturbed.
“Y’see, Teal’c, there’s this treaty we have about not militarizing space,” the colonel tried to explain.
“But you are fighting against the Goa’uld,” Teal’c stated, raising an eyebrow. “The Goa’uld have spaceships with weapons.”
“Uh, yeah, they do,” Colonel O’Neill admitted, turning and raising an eyebrow at Sam. “Carter?”
“Don’t look at me sir,” she said, smiling slightly before looking back out the window. Space was supposed to be the frontier, the place they could explore without fighting, and Teal’c was wrong, there were weapons onboard. The ones they’d brought.
***
These are the things they do tell you.
Human beings adjust to new situations disturbingly quickly, but it helps to know which way is up.
Force of gravity depends on planet mass. You will be heavier on Kelowna. You will feel like floating on PX3-989. Antarctica will feel like Earth, even when you think it isn’t.
Space is big. Just because you can ‘gate to another planet in one step doesn’t mean a rescue ship can arrive in your lifetime.
Don’t hold your breath.
2003
Sam was building a spaceship, which alone would make her thirteen-year-old self flip out. But she wasn’t just building a spaceship. She was building one with artificial gravity and inertial dampeners and faster than light engines and everything else she’d say should be impossible. Except after you’ve blown up a sun, impossible didn’t have the same meaning anymore.
Of course, the Prometheus Project wasn’t just hers. There was a whole team of scientists and engineers for whom the ship was their only job. She only got to help whenever she had enough time on Earth without something else at SGC demanding her attention.
She’d just gotten back and was poring over some blueprints, trying to figure out where they’d messed up the wiring to make the engine control room lights flash like a college party when Colonel O’Neill popped his head in the door.
“Hey, how’d it go?” he asked, stepping in and heading right for the shelf where she kept shiny objects he couldn’t break.
“The air circulation system’s working perfectly,” she told him as he picked up the small metal space shuttle, using his thumb to flip the payload bay doors open and shut. “But we’re having some problem with the wiring in this access shaft.” She pointed to the blueprint spread on her bench.
He walked over, stared at it a minute, then looked up. “Okay, but how does it look?” It happened nearly every time - within thirty minutes of her getting back he’d be in her office, dropping his facade just long enough for her to see the glimmer of hope and amazement before he covered it up again.
“Beautiful,” Sam says, smiling. “If we ever get it off the ground.”
“You checked for,” his hand waved indistinctly, “booby-traps?”
“All Earth made, sir.”
He nodded. “If you can pull yourself away from those fascinating blueprints, Doc Fraiser could use your help packing for Antarctica. And if you could check on Jonas, I think he might have been a tad over-eager trying to bring the entire SGC library. We ship out in six hours.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, rolling up the diagram.
Back in the beginning of the Stargate Program, she and Daniel had discussed childhood dreams. Daniel had never wanted to slip the bounds of Earth. He'd dreamed of secrets beneath the sand and reviving dead languages and academic recognition. He imagined an office, museum exhibits and sand-scoured, wind-burnt skin -- mysteries on Earth rather than among the stars.
Sam had only ever dreamed of touching the stars, of jumping high enough to not fall back and seeing everything that was out there and maybe, maybe, not looking back.
Sometimes she wondered what Colonel O’Neill had dreamed and what dreams he’d given up.
***
These are the things you will learn.
Force equals mass times acceleration but that doesn’t count, and neither does relativity, when you don’t play in normal space.
Physics problems aren’t as much fun when they involve real people.
Touching the stars doesn’t make you want them any less.
Sometimes the dreams are all you have left and sometimes you have to set them free.
2005
Jack winced and bit back the curse when his shin slammed into the end table Daniel had moved earlier. That was one plus about moving to Washington, he’d be able to watch movies without two geeks complaining about everything Hollywood messed up and then putting his furniture back wrong.
“Sir?” a sleepy voice asked from the couch. He turned, nearly dropping the metal tube wedged under his arm, to see Carter half-sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Earlier she’d insisted Daniel and Teal’c take the beds in the loft, claiming she fit best down here.
“Carter,” he whispered, carefully stepping around the table and hoping there weren’t any more land mines. “Go back to sleep.”
“Sir, what are you doing?” she asked, sitting up straighter. Damn. He hadn’t wanted his increased inability to sleep through the night to disturb any of them.
“Night’s clear,” he said, shrugging and heading for the back door. As he adjusted the rickety tripod, twisting the back leg to the only spot it would hold without collapsing, he heard the door open and close behind him. After another second making sure the old telescope wasn’t going to land in the pond, he turned to find Carter standing with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Somehow, with the moonlight glinting off her hair, she looked taller. He thought maybe she’d looked taller this whole year, since finally getting the command she should have gotten years ago. If only he hadn’t been too dependent on her, on all of them, cared more than he should have. Not that he’d ever admit that to any of them.
He nodded at her and bent down, slowly turning the creaky gears to aim the scope and, finally, satisfied, stepped back. “Care to take a look?” he asked, keeping one hand on the instrument to hold it steady.
Carter stepped forward, bending toward the eyepiece in one smooth motion. “That’s…” she started to say quietly.
“Mare Tranquilitatis,” he finished. “Better scope you might still be able to see the LEM.”
She flashed him a quick, surprised smile before looking back down at something he was sure she’d seen before. Eight years ago she was so amazed by the event horizon of her first open wormhole, he’d had to shove her through it to Abydos. It had been a long time since he’d seen that kind of wonder on her face. A part of him missed it.
“Sir, you have a better telescope at your house,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but this one belongs here,” he said, giving it a gentle pat. “My grandfather bought it when Sputnik was launched.”
Carter leaned back to look at the stars with just her eyes, face looking younger in the moonlight. There were times Jack wished you could erase years that easily. “Sir, before the Stargate Program,” she asked quietly, not looking his way, “did you ever want to go up there?”
“Yeah.” His soft answer faded away into the night.
“What happened?” she asked.
Jack picked up a rock, rubbing his thumb across the smooth surface, finding the tiny nicks in the surface that had been rubbed smooth over the centuries. With a flick of his wrist he sent it bouncing once, twice, three times before sinking beneath the surface of the water. He’d taught Charlie to skip stones, standing right here.
“Life.”
***
Prometheus brought fire to man and incurred the wrath of the gods.
Daedalus built wings to fly like the gods and lost his only son when Icarus tried to touch the stars.
Odysseus sailed the Odyssey on an endless quest to return home after angering the gods.
Korelev was a man who built rockets to first fling humans into space.
Goa’uld motherships don’t have names.
2007
Sam couldn’t do anything but float and watch as the Ori ships plowed through the Supergate. She should have been terrified but she was too busy being frustrated by her inability to do anything as the ships tore through their measly armada, as the Odyssey took hit after hit, and the motherships blew and she thought, in the distance, she saw the Korelev take one shot too many.
She didn’t start shaking until she was back on Earth. Not back inside the concrete walls of the SGC. Not in the infirmary waiting to get cleared or back in her lab tidying up loose ends or helping Daniel get Vala settled into quarters. It was when she took the long elevator ride to the surface, signed out at three different checkpoints, and walked out to the parking lot that it started.
The sun had set hours ago and the cool breeze coming off the mountains was starting to cut the heat of the day. Somewhere in the distance an owl was hooting and all above the heavens pulsed at her - infinite blackness scattered with specks of light and she could only look upwards and shudder. Suddenly she felt just how infinite and cold and huge and unrelenting the universe was and the stars that once called to her were heavy and overwhelming.
When her cell phone rang her hand shook so much she nearly dropped it. “Carter,” she said into the mouthpiece, trying to sound controlled.
“Heard you had quite the EVA,” General O’Neill’s voice greeted her.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Didn’t do much good.”
“We’ve gotten out of plenty of scrapes before.”
“I know but…” she paused, remembering floating there as everything exploded around her, and shivered. “I’ve never seen ships like that. We didn’t even slow them down. I’m not sure how we can stop them.”
“Carter. I seem to remember you blowing up a sun.”
“That was just science, sir.”
“We kicked the Goa’uld’s ass and got rid of the Replicators. I think we can take on some over-zealous preachers.” She thought he knew how over-confident he sounded.
“Maybe,” she agreed quietly.
During the minute of silence that followed she straddled her motorcycle, hunching over the handles so her back was to the sky. Her hands were still shaking. She probably shouldn’t drive home - should probably go back into the mountain, see who was still there, have dinner, maybe sleep in her quarters. But burying herself deep underground was just as unfathomable.
“Carter?” O’Neill’s voice asked. “Still there?”
She opened her mouth, felt a lump in her throat, finally managed to whisper, “I really thought I was going to die out there.” She saw it all, the Korelev explode with, she’d thought, Daniel and Cam, and the fiery death of motherships (no way to tell which one held Teal’c) and then the Odyssey disappearing and she got to survive the battle, useless, and float among the debris until her air went out. And yet somehow she couldn’t stop calling on her radio.
“Sam.” The name he never used shocked her spine straight. “Look up.”
“Sir?”
“Look up.” His voice was firmer. “What do you see?”
“Uh. Stars?”
“How many of them have we visited?”
“Um, a tiny fraction. Most of the planets we’ve been to don’t have stars that are visible from Earth.”
“Most of the planets we’ve been to,” he echoed. “Ten years ago could you have imagined yourself saying that?”
“Not so much,” she admitted, smiling slightly.
“Okay, Carter, so you go home, have a beer, get some sleep, and tomorrow you can start saving the universe again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And just remember, you blew up a sun.” He hung up before she could respond.
She looked up, trying to remember how to look at the sky and see its potential. To the north was a dim light, barely visible to the naked eye -- the star she blew up -- the last of its light still speeding toward Earth.
Resource acknowledgments: Andrew Chaikin's A Man On the Moon; The Right Stuff; The Space Camp Reference Handbook; everything I picked up over the years at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, National Air and Space Museum; and www.nasa.gov